Inspectors with the Hawaiʻi Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity have long been charged with inspecting the inward flow of plants and produce that may contain invasive species and restricting those that pose a risk to the islands. But new testimony shows they may not be holding a hard enough line.
Lawmakers have proposed Senate Bill 2760 to tighten the reins on enforcement of current rules, give the agency power to inspect non-agricultural goods and fine those who violate those expanded laws. In doing so, they’ve discovered the agency has been exercising discretion over whether to allow pest-infested goods across the border.
The department has pushed back against the bill and, in its resistance, found itself in hot water with lawmakers over concerns that it may have been ignoring its own mandate for more than 50 years.
Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, who introduced the 11-page legislation, says that allowing inspection agents to pick and choose which infested cargo to keep out is a serious problem at a time when Hawaiʻi’s most notorious pests — including little fire ants, coconut rhinoceros beetles and coqui frogs — compromise the state’s ecological balance and its campaign to double local food production. It’s especially noteworthy given that the agriculture agency has gained over $25 million in funding in the past two years for more staff and stronger invasive species control.
Now, the representative from Kāne‘ohe and Kailua wants answers.
“Does a product get to enter Hawaiʻi if it has just a few grubs?” Keohokalole asked. “ A few (Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle) grubs going to Kona is how we got CRB in Kona; a few grubs going to Kauaʻi is why we’re currently losing all of the coconut trees at that golf course on Kauaʻi.
“There’s a reason this statute was written this way 50 years ago. I’d like to know how long the department has been openly ignoring it.”
The Mandate
The Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity submitted six pages of testimony on SB 2760. In it, Director Sharon Hurd suggested substantial changes to the lawmakers’ draft, though she did not expressly oppose the bill.
The suggested changes raised some eyebrows, especially since the bill aims to fix regulatory shortcomings highlighted by the department in recent years. During the discussion about the agency’s capacity to increase inspections to include non-agricultural goods at a February hearing, Plant Quarantine Branch Manager Jonathan Ho told lawmakers that department staff were trusted to let “lightly infested” goods into the state without treatment.
That, Keohokalole said, is in direct violation of the current law. According to the language, inspectors may only exercise discretion in what to do with infested material — destroy it or send it back. The agency is technically also allowed to treat incoming goods, although it does not have the facilities to do so.
“So DAB’s existing policy is to violate its mandate?” Keohokalole asked at the hearing.
“That’s the policy we’ve always used,” Ho responded.
Keohokalole sent a letter to the department to get answers on what he called shadow policy. He suspects staff have been trained to violate the agency’s mandate since it was written in 1973. Ho’s admission, Keohokalole said, shows that the agency continues to bow to pressure from the plant nursery sector and the broader agricultural industry it is charged with regulating.
The department partially responded to the legislator’s request for relevant documents on Monday, though it did not provide training manuals and documents related to its operational procedures and threat determinations.
“The Department respectfully disagrees with the characterization that its practices constitute a violation of statute,” Hurd wrote in a letter.
Ho told Civil Beat the department does not contest that the state needs better protections. But, he added, not all pests are equally concerning to Hawaiʻi.
If aphids or another low-risk species shows up, inspectors might ignore those shipments, he said. But if cargo contains a brown tree snake or red imported fire ants, “that’s where the discretion comes in.”
Such discretion, he added, is informed by the International Plant Protection Convention, along with national standards and laws, including the U.S. Commerce Clause, which says that interstate business should not be “overburdened by state laws.”
After the hearing, Ho said he agrees there needs to be a comprehensive review of the department’s authorities and guiding statutes. But without more employees, he said the agency can only do so much. Ho told Civil Beat that the department is only now regaining the staffing levels it had before the recession led to mass layoffs in 2008 and 2009.
“We’re basically at the same level that we were 15 years ago, and there’s more to do,” he said.
Currently the department only has the resources to inspect 15% of inbound agricultural goods, Ho said. And only 0.03% of the more than 9 million lots inspected in fiscal year 2024 were rejected or destroyed, according to a state report.
Countering Culture
Lawmakers have expressed concern about the agency’s treatment of invasive species for more than a decade. However, the recent and rapid spread of coconut rhinoceros beetles and little fire ants has rekindled the Legislature’s interest in the issue and drawn scrutiny of the agriculture agency’s inner workings.
The agency also has been accused previously of pandering to the industries it regulates, particularly after it walked back proposed restrictions on the interisland plant trade after nursery industry representatives raised concerns about draft regulations.
“Without a doubt, we need a culture change,” Keohokalole said. “They have two conflicting mandates: to promote the agriculture industry, but also to regulate that same industry. That push and pull sometimes create problems, and this is an example of it.”
Former state agriculture director Scott Enright said discretion in the inspection process at the border was a necessity due to limited resources and staff during his tenure, from 2014 until 2019. A 2017 state audit of the department’s pest control efforts said its biosecurity practices were inconsistent and its staff lacked clear guidance.
Enright added that the underfunded system and use of discretion seemed to lead staff to “play favorites,” particularly with the nursery industry, which is especially vulnerable to pest infestations.
Fitting The Bill
Perhaps the most substantial change in SB 2760 is its expansion of the department’s authority to inspect non-agricultural goods coming into Hawaiʻi, such as building materials and vehicles.
The hope is to better protect the state against new species that could be at least as problematic as coconut beetles and fire ants. Such pests could hitchhike in on just about anything, from a car’s tires to the ballast water in a ship.
Advocates from environmental and agricultural organizations support broadening the department’s authority to include what the bill calls common sense regulations, even if the department’s staff feel overburdened. Other islands, such as New Zealand, already take a much stricter approach to infested shipments. Lawmakers have visited the South Pacific nation several times in recent years, in a bid to learn about and emulate its system in Hawaiʻi. The country’s model informed Act 236 last year, which tasked the agency with setting up public-private partnerships to build border inspection facilities.
Christy Martin, program coordinator at the Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species, said that while the agency’s staff levels are not ideal, it’s important to ensure they are legally allowed to inspect a wide variety of goods they believe might harbor new pests. The department, she said, “has very few tools.”
After reviewing its policies, Ho suggested the department should bring recommendations back to lawmakers for consideration.
“I don’t think we’re in disagreement about protecting the state from the introduction of pests. There’s no question,” Ho said. “Nobody wants another CRB.”
Story originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
